


Play On

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: Depression, F/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the tragic events of Episode 6, Bel struggles to carry on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play On

**Author's Note:**

> Previously housed at Fanfiction.net.

She is a coward.

The cool tumbler glass concedes this.

The tablets, laid on a file, torment her.

She is a damned coward.

 

Everyone has tried being strong for her, not only today- the final day- but even when she made two cups of coffee and every time she looked hopefully up at the door, thinking it was him, realising it was not.

Despite spiraling further into his drunken stupor, Hector has managed to smile for the audience and keep the ship from sinking.

Marnie, putting all their differences aside, has brought her casseroles and stews; red meat is good for grief apparently.

Isaac has done his best to avoid her, in case she suddenly crumbles or cries, or lest he do that himself.

Sissy has only nodded understandingly when she has snapped at her for a simple, trivial thing.

Randall has never commented on her increasing lack of communication, late working hours and the omnipresent glint of tears on her lashes.

Then, there's Lix. She's been there from the moment they took him; pulling her away, giving her a drink as soon as she'd been strong enough to hold it, letting her sob on her shoulder until daylight came.

And this is how she's repaying them?

_He's gone, sweetheart, he's gone._

Lix isn't there now, she's left her alone and Bel likes it, after hearing the woman's footsteps descend down the corridor and the lights click off. She is enveloped in darkness.

She will not use her lamp.

The audacious colour.

The audacity of him getting it for her.  
Only the thin shaft of moonlight from in between the slats of her blind permits her to line up the pills.

She toys with the first one- placing it with a shaky hand to her lips and subsequently replacing it.

 _You're running towards a loaded gun and you think, you can miraculously dodge the bullet._

They'd been stupid, she'd been so stupid. The games they'd played with each other, the mindless quarreling... the kiss had all lead to this, every moment wasted had meant this was coming closer.

_Well, you can't, not this time._

She reclines in her chair and swallows one slowly, breathing deeply. The decision had been made, she isn't drifting anymore.

Another. Silence had terrified her before, yet now it is the lone thing she craves, the thing she lives on.

Another, this time whiskey follows. That's always been the problem: her inability to be decisive; thinking she loves him, thinking she does not, wishing he had been there in the months she didn't see him, glad he was not, writing him a letter to him, unable to send it.

Now, she is working mechanically, systematically through the line, two at once. She should have... She could have just got on the bloody plane.

_I want to write and say I'll be there, I'll get on a plane, I'll come right now._

She was worried, terribly worried about loving him, about their life together and what that would entail; she'd never loved anyone before, neither had he. It had always been just the two of them.

Freddie and Bel.

Mr. Lyon and Miss. Rowley.

James and Moneypenny.

She was worried that he see her for what she truly was: a broken women, a lost soul in a sea of work and men and responsibility. However much she hates to think about it, she used to pretend in front of him- more than most people, never letting him see her bare bones. He'd been the same, so perfect in his absence; the things that used to infuriate her, now make her heart burn and give her the courage to finish this.

Dead people are easier to love.

There are life's natural heroes and then there's you.

The last pill is consumed, the final drop of liquid is crashing in her stomach. All she has to do is wait, her life is a waiting game. She laughs at the irony as she begins to tidy her desk; straitening a pile of paperwork, sorting the files into alphabetical order, carefully returning the letter to its hidden place in the drawer.

Beside it is a photograph, old and forgotten down the side, pressed against some books.

It is of them: she is happy, she isn't concentrating but he is studying her in adoration, arms folded across his chest. She remembers it being taken, it was in their first year at the BBC... A party, the occasion she can no longer recalled, someone had just got a camera and had taken pictures of all their colleagues. He hadn't wanted to, not at first; she had had to beg him, until he had eventually given in, like he always did.

The photographer, not knowing them very well, had thought they were together and given them two- telling them to keep them by their beds, when they were ever apart.

Presumptuous bastard.

She wonders whether he kept his, what he did with it, whether it lay on his bedside table, or whether it was stuck at the back of a drawer somewhere.

She holds hers to her. She closes her eyes.

_Why should I have excepted anything less than fearlessness from you?_

The wave is coming, she can feel it clutching at her senses, starting to override her being.

She isn't afraid. She is completely calm.

She doesn't regret it. For once in her life, she is sure that this is the right thing to do.

She is going, she is going.

Her ego dissolves; she has done well, she has made a difference, she has helped people and written some bloody good stories. She never needed anyone on her rise to success, never relied on anyone. Her body relaxes and lets it all go; this a relief, she supposes, like lancing a wound.

When it stops, she feels nothing.

When it stops, she is whole again.

When it stops, she is with him.

 _I'm the coward, Freddie, not you_.


End file.
